Challenge Corners
A Challenge Corner is the collective presentation of learning area activity ideas, requiring the students to further develop their understandings of:
- personal and cultural identity through The Arts, using a range of arts forms to develop creative skills, critical appreciation and artistic techniques.
- how the English language operates as a social process and how to use language in a variety of forms and situations.
- health issues and the skills needed to make responsible decisions about health and physical activity and to promote their own and others' health and well-being.
- communicating effectively in languages other than English, developing their understandings of other societies.
- how individuals and groups live together and interact; developing a respect for cultural heritage and a commitment to social justice, democratic process and ecological sustainability.
- mathematical concepts and representations to describe, interpret and reason about their social and physical world.
- scientific investigations about the physical, biological and technological world, using evidence to evaluate the use of science in society and the application of science in daily life.
- the knowledge, skills, experience and resources needed to design technological solutions to meet the needs of individuals, societies and environments. Curriculum Framework (1998)
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Format and organisation
Challenge Corners may be presented in a similar format to learning centres and all materials should be supplied in an accessible form for the required activities.
As with learning centres, students may utilise activities when they have finished set work quickly, as a negotiated alternative to some set work or as tasks in their own right either individually, in pairs or in small groups.
A Challenge Corner should:
- be challenging and provide opportunity for self/peer/group assessment;
- contain no element of compulsion - if the students are not using the activities, analyse the activities, not the students;
- be thematic, learning area specific or included under the criterion of "challenge";
- not be a subversive way of practising or reinforcing work covered in school lessons - although it may spring from what is initiated during formal work;
- include multiple copies and a mixture of teacher/student produced and commercial materials;
- include tasks you feel students may not be able to handle - that way you will find out if they can.